In World Cup Qualifiers, U.S. Soccer Team Faces an Old Foe: Altitude

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Knowing his players would have two World Cup qualifiers at higher altitudes, United States Coach Bruce Arena began receiving personalized conditioning plans for them from the team’s athletic performance staff in January.CreditMatthew Stockman/Getty Images

By Graham Parker

June 7, 2017

Herculez Gomez had been playing professional soccer in Mexico for several years when he arrived with the United States national team for a vital World Cup qualifier at Azteca Stadium in 2013.

Experience had taught him that at Mexico City’s elevation of more than 7,300 feet, it was not just the home team, or the 100,000 fans, or the laser pointers and the projectiles that visitors had to overcome. There was also the matter of the thin, polluted air itself.

Still, what Gomez found in the locker room that day surprised him.

“We had oxygen tanks before the game and at halftime, and I remember thinking: ‘This is a little exaggerated, right? A little extreme? It’s not really that bad,’” Gomez said this week. “But then I’d think back to my first time playing in Mexico City, and it all kind of resonates.”

The United States team will return to Mexico this weekend for another vital World Cup qualifier, the final step in a methodical climb that began with a friendly in Sandy, Utah, (elevation: 4,449 feet) on Saturday and continues with a World Cup qualifier against Trinidad and Tobago in Commerce City, Colo., (elevation: 5,184 feet) on Thursday night.

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Azteca Stadium in Mexico City through a thick haze in March 2016, when the city government declared an air pollution alert.CreditEduardo Verdugo/Associated Press

As usual, the timing and the settings of the games have raised the specter that fatigue, as much as skill, could alter the trajectory of the Americans’ campaign to qualify for next year’s World Cup in Russia.

In brief transitions like the current qualifying window, United States Coach Bruce Arena told reporters this week, “the longer you’re in altitude, the more you’re affected by it.”

“If you come in for one or two days, you can get through it because your body still hasn’t understood it fully. Now our bodies understand it, and we’re playing through that a little bit,” Arena said. “Hopefully, by Thursday, we will be a little bit more adjusted and more prepared, physically, in Mexico City.”

Gomez first played in Mexico City in 2010, with Puebla, his Mexican team then, and remembers struggling to adapt to the conditions.

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Jared Borgetti of Mexico celebrated a first-half goal against the United States in March 2005. Mexico went on to win, 2-1.CreditBrian Bahr/Getty Images

“The sun beating down on you, a big field, and you have the combination of smog and altitude — that was my first altitude experience,” he said. “It all hits you at once, and in combination you just feel like your legs don’t respond in the way you’re accustomed to. I actually scored in the third minute, but after the game the coach was yelling: ‘And you! I should have taken you off in minute four!’”

By the time Gomez represented the United States in that 2013 match — a credible 0-0 tie — he was long accustomed to playing at high altitudes. But he had sympathy for his peers who did not know quite what to expect; if it took oxygen masks to reassure them or Coach Jurgen Klinsmann, so be it.

Altitude has always been the acknowledged third wheel in the United States-Mexico rivalry — even for a Mexican national team that increasingly features players who live and work abroad. By now it is met with a mix of acknowledgment that the elevation will be a factor and a studied refusal to make it more significant than it has to be.

It’s a delicate balance, and one Arena himself prefers not to discuss. His medical team — including the fitness coach Daniel Guzman and the national team’s high-performance director, James Bunce — gave him personalized preparation plans for this week’s games starting in January, but no member of the team or the coaching staff is permitted to discuss those preparations with the news media in any detail.

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A vendor at Azteca Stadium wore a surgical mask before a Concacaf Champions League semifinal in April 2016.CreditYuri Cortez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The few procedural details a team spokesman could release were largely in line with standard approaches to mitigating the effects of altitude: Change eating habits (less, more often); drink particular juices in recovery mode; and schedule the training camps and preparatory games at ever-increasing elevations to acclimate.

The reluctance to discuss the topic, though, seems less a matter of secrecy than something akin to superstition: Arena and U.S. Soccer may be less concerned about protecting trade secrets than about advancing concern, rather than awareness, inside the team.

Arena will find plenty of sympathy for that approach from a familiar face in Denver on Thursday. Pablo Mastroeni, the coach of the Colorado Rapids, played for Arena in a 2005 loss at Azteca that saw an American team stocked with European-based players fade badly in the second half.

Mastroeni contended in an interview that the effects of altitude are psychological as much as physiological, so he and his team have worked with researchers at the University of Colorado to maximize the efficiency of their work late in games.

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Clint Dempsey of the United States going for the ball against José Manuel Velázquez, left, and Pablo Camacho of Venezuela during a friendly on Saturday in Sandy, Utah.CreditJeffrey Swinger/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

“At about 65 or 70 minutes of football,” he said, “the opposing team that isn’t quite acclimated begins to fatigue.” He said the score at that point could be decisive: A team that is trailing might not feel it has the strength to mount a rally.

“I believe that the emotional component to this is actually the part that exacerbates the altitude,” he said.

And like Arena, Mastroeni subscribes to the idea that there is a danger in players’ being overly aware of the altitude.

“I think the further you go down the rabbit hole on altitude, you could experience a psychosomatic effect as opposed to a real physical effect,” he said. The danger, he said, is that players who are given too much information will refer to it as they tire.

“It’s almost like there’s no physical preparation you can do that can prepare you for the psychological damage you’ve already placed onto yourself,” Mastroeni said, imagining a player thinking: “‘This is what they talked about — me hitting the wall in the 70th minute.’ Or, ‘My legs are so heavy — this is what they talked about.’”

Under those circumstances, the intensity of the game itself can be a blessing. Gomez described playing in the 2013 match and recalled a frenetic pace in which “everything was going so fast that I really didn’t have time to be tired.”

Gomez also noted that the traditional advantage Mexico’s players enjoyed in home-field conditions at Azteca has eroded somewhat, now that the team’s best players play abroad. They, too, face an acclimatization process to be ready for Sunday; Mexico Coach Juan Carlos Osorio said in an interview in New York last month that the team would hold its own high-altitude training camp ahead of two matches at Azteca this week.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Soccer Faces Old Foe: Higher Altitude. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe